Julian Steward Award

If you need further information or have any questions about the upcoming 2019 competition please contact Laura A. Ogden ([email protected]).

Nominations for 2019 Julian Steward Award

The Anthropology & Environment Society of American Anthropological Association (AAA) awards the Julian Steward Award bi-annually for the best monograph in environmental & ecological anthropology.

The prize was awarded in 2017 to Anna L. Tsing (UC Santa Cruz) for her book The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins(Princeton Press) and in 2015 to Alexa Dietrich (Wagner College) for her book “The Drug Company Next Door: Pollution, Jobs and Community Health” in Puerto Rico (NYU Press).

The 2019 prize will be awarded during the AAA annual meetings in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Entries must have been published within the last two years. There is no need to submit a letter of nomination for the 2019 Julian Steward Award. Simply send a copy of the book (a total of 3) to each of the following members of the review committee:

The Anthropology & Environment Society has awarded its Julian Steward Prize to Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (University of California, Santa Cruz) for her book “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” (Princeton University Press).

2015 Julian Steward Award

The Anthropology & Environment Society has awarded its Julian Steward Prize to Wagner College anthropologist Alexa Dietrich for her 2013 book The Drug Company Next Door: Pollution, Jobs, and Community Health in Puerto Rico (New York University Press, 2013), a brilliant study of the interaction of a Puerto Rican community with pharmaceutical companies.

The production of pharmaceuticals is among the most profitable industries on the planet. Drug companies produce chemical substances that can save, extend, or substantially improve the quality of human life. However, even as the companies present themselves publicly as health and environmental stewards, their factories are a significant source of air and water pollution–toxic to people and the environment. In Puerto Rico, the pharmaceutical industry is the backbone of the island’s economy: in one small town alone, there are over a dozen drug factories representing five multinationals, the highest concentration per capita of such factories in the world. It is a place where the enforcement of environmental regulations and the public trust they ensure are often violated in the name of economic development. The Drug Company Next Door unites the concerns of critical medical anthropology with those of political ecology, investigating the multi-faceted role of pharmaceutical corporations as polluters, economic providers, and social actors. Rather than simply demonizing the drug companies, the volume explores the dynamics involved in their interactions with the local community and discusses the strategies used by both individuals and community groups to deal with the consequences of pollution. The Drug Company Next Door puts a human face on a growing set of problems for communities around the world. Accessible and engaging, the book encourages readers to think critically about the role of corporations in everyday life, health, and culture.

Past Julian Steward Award Winners

2013 Winner

The 2013 Julian Steward Award went to Erik Mueggler for his 2011 book The Paper Road: Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China and Tibet (Univ. of California Press).

Erik Mueggler is professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

The announcement was made in December at the annual convention by president Glenn Davis Stone.

The Prize committee commended Prof. Mueggler for his lyrical account of the journeys of two early twentieth-century botanists who explored the borderlands between China, Tibet and Burma, and their collaborative relationships with Yunnan villagers. The book presents colonial science as an intimate, personal affair, and shows the effects of local knowledge. The text beautifully infuses biography, ethnography, botany and geography with captivating tales of daring adventure.

2011 Winner

The “Hikayat Banjar,” a native court chronicle from Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as “the banana tree at the gate.” Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo’s native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove’s analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.

2009 Winner

The 2009 Julian Steward Award went to David Crawford, for his book entitled, Moroccan Households in the World Economy: Labor and Inequality in a Berber Village, published by Louisiana State University Press in 2008.

David Crawford
Departments of Sociology and Anthropology and International Studies
Fairfield University
North Benson Rd.
Fairfield, CT 06824

2008 Winner

No prize given.

2007 Winner

The fifth award went to Steven Lansing for his book, Perfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali (Princeton University press, 2006).

2005 Winner

Dr. J. Terrence McCabe won the third annual Julian Steward Award for his book Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies: Turkana Ecology, Politics, and Raiding in a Disequilibrium System, published by the University of Michigan Press.

2004 Winner

The winner of the second Julian Steward Award was Dr. Paul Nadasdy’s Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon, published by University of British Columbia Press.

Paul Nadasdy
Department of Anthropology and the American Indian Program
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

2003 Winner

The first award of $500 was presented to Roberto González of San José State University for his book Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca (University of Texas Press, 2001) at the 2003 AAA meeting in Chicago.

Roberto González
Department of Anthropology
San José State University
One Washington Square
San José State University
San José, CA 95192-0113